This book presents the case that the origins of American liberty should not be sought in the constitutional-reformist feats of its \"statesmen\" during the 1780s, but rather in the political and social resistance to their efforts. There were two revolutions occurring in the late 18th century America: the modern European revolution \"in favour of government,\" pursuing national unity, \"energetic\" government and centralization of power (what scholars usually dub \"American founding\"); and a conservative, reactionary counter-revolution \"in favour of liberty,\" defending local rights and liberal individualism against the encroaching political authority. This is a book about this liberal counter-revolution and its ideological, political and cultural sources and central protagonists. The central analytical argument of the book is that America before the Revolution was a stateless, spontaneous political order that evolved culturally, politically and economically in isolation from the modern European trends of state-building and centralization of power. The book argues, then, that a better model for understanding America is a \"decoupled modernization\" hypothesis, in which social modernity is divested from the politics of modern state and tied with the pre-modern social institutions. 1 Illustrations, black and white; XI, 279 p. 1 illus.